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Joyce Dzidzor Mensah, Ghana’s highly
respectedHIV/AIDS Ambassador, has told News-One she had never tested
positive for HIV but was only telling the nation and the world on a lie
just to satisfy her selfish interest.
Joyce has claimed over the years that she was HIV positive but was a healthy person because she was on antiretroviral drugs.
She
has had support and funding from several organizations, institutions,
banks and civil society in her campaign across the country on how to
prevent HIV and how persons who have tested positive can live healthily
and happily with the virus.
Surprisingly, Joyce, 27, has told
'News-One' she was only a scammer and that she decided to engage in a
wild public deceit so as to get a place to lay her head at a time her
neighbors were wrongly accusing her of having HIV.
“I was known
as the HIV ambassador. The story I shared in the past years was a fusion
of my story and the stories of others. The truth of the matter is, I
was never infected with HIV,” she said.
Meanwhile Dzidzor has
toured several Ghanaian schools and mounted international platforms to
fight the stigma against HIV & AIDS victims as well as encouraging
young men and women to abstain from premarital sex and unprotected sex.
Below is exactly what Dzidzor said:
I met a man in my church where I used to fellowship. We fell in love but I didn’t know of his HIV status.
Though
he knew he was HIV positive, he never told me. A member of the church
who is a nurse once saw me with him and she called me to advise me. The
nurse advised me to be careful with him because she knew of his HIV
status. Unfortunately for me, I met the nurse just a day after I had sex
with the man.
I then confided in the nurse and she asked me to
quickly report at the hospital so that I can be given PEP (Post Exposure
Profilaxis). I did exactly that in order not to contract the HIV virus.
I became pregnant though, but I decided to keep the pregnancy.
My
boyfriend fell sick and died before I had the baby. People stigmatized
me without knowing if I contract HIV from him or not. I was eventually
beaten and thrown out of the house I was living in with my parents.
Having nowhere to stay, I went to live in the secretariat of the
associations of persons living with HIV.
I prayed along and
behaved as if I had HIV too just to have a place to lay my head and
learn from people living with HIV. I attended a lot of workshops
organized by NGO’s on HIV just to equip myself with information. I heard
lots of HIV interesting stories from people on stigma related issues.
At
a point in time, I accepted and lived like a person living with HIV.
And I always told my story as if I was living with HIV, I shared my
story based on what I went through just to let people know that people
with HIV are normal human beings.
I would have contracted the
virus and probably died but God saved me. That was why going to schools
to educate them became my passion just for students to abstain from
premarital sex.
Why I Acted As A Person Living With HIV
I
realized that there was no way of defending myself when people started
gossiping about me in my neighbourhood. It was because my boyfriend in
the church died of AIDS and my church members and neighbours knew he
died of AIDS. There was no way I could ever defend myself.
At a
point, I had to accept the situation at hand. I knew there was going to
be a time the truth about my status was going to come out, and this is
the time.
I plead with the general public and my fans not to be
disappointed in me for acting all these years. It was worth it because a
lot of lives were saved through my advocacy work.
I also
sincerely apologise to the hundreds of churches I have been to with my
message both in Ghana and abroad to forgive me. I did it to fight HIV
stigma and discrimination.
I also plead with schools, institutions and banks who have all benefited from my story to forgive me.
I now therefore want to thank all who have supported me throughout these years one way or the other.
Why The Confession Now?
I
want to officially announce to the general public that I am no more the
HIV ambassador due to the fact that the First Lady has been made the
HIV ambassador.
Also, there have been rumours in town that I am
dead but as at now I don’t know the source of the information. I was out
of the country for three months now and I returned only to be receiving
calls and text messages asking if I’m dead. My stepfather nearly
collapsed when he heard the news about my death. I want to inform
everyone that I am not dead.
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